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Month: December 2010

I’m growing so tired of this debate and I’m sure in some unknown span of time, it will no longer matter. But, recently someone asked why I was targeting TerpTools as a web application instead of building a native app. I wish the answer was simple and straight forward, but as most decisions are, it’s one-part pragmatism, one-part core belief, and one-part feeling the ever increase squeeze of time in my adult life.

First, I am a web developer. I considered my first language to be Perl. As my career progressed, I added other tools to my belt as various projects and managers deemed them worthy of the task. The mobile market is fragmented and diverging. I’m still amazed at programmers who are able to design simultaneously in Java and Objective-C. Really, I hold these programmers in high respect. Their audiences are potentially huge and they can spend time catering to one segment at a time. However, my audience (free-lance sign language interpreters) are a tiny, wide-spread bunch who use various phones, on different platforms, across multiple carriers. To build something that benefits the community, I want to focus at the task in front of me. So, one code base to serve a small community is what works for me right now.

Second, any good coder should respect the user and the user’s device. Programming on the open web does this. If you want to know what I’m doing on your device, look at the source code. If you don’t want the application to track your location, instruct your browser accordingly. Browsers are (supposedly) built to limit what code can do on your device. Native apps have more control in the device and the source might be closed. Granted this argument is still open to debate and will change. And frankly, it should be debated.

The third is time. I can do more to mock-up an idea in an evening using jQuery Mobile than I can in the Android SDK. This might be different from other programmers. However, as HTML5 and the associated JavaScript API comes of age, I can do more in a shorter amount of time. And isn’t that the end goal of programming and coding. As fun as these tools and libraries are, our duty, calling, and privilege is solve a problem or simplify a task for someone else and move on to the next.

Imagine when Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet traveled across the pond searching for methods to educate deaf children. Imagine if the Braidwood family in Scotland had been open about their methodology in educating deaf children. Imagine if Gallaudet had not traveled with Sicard to Paris. Things might be surely different today. While the former group happily celebrated their results, they kept how they achieved those results secret. The latter openly shared their ideas and methods, and because so, spread those ideas to another continent. That is, because one group operated in an “open source” fashion, they changed the course of history.